Four out of five men will start to go seriously bald at some point in their lives and about half of them will do so by the time they are 35. As if that statistic were not bad enough in itself, the largest genetic study of the trait yet conducted suggests that prematurely bald men are also likely to be slightly shorter, to have paler skin and to be at a marginally but significantly greater risk of many life-threatening diseases than their better-thatched peers. Far from being an accident of biology, early-onset male pattern baldness [MPB] appears to be the most visible sign of a complicated web of processes that are also implicated in prostate cancer, Parkinson’s disease and high blood pressure. Fortunately, though, there…

Source: The Times March 09, 2017 12:06 UTC